Nosce te ipsum

I've been reading Scoble since the very beginning and while I don't always agree with him (ok, seldomly) -- I respect the hell out of what he does for Microsoft. If Microsoft had a slew of people like Robert, public opinion of them would be 180* the other direction.

Today Robert has a fascinating discussion with David Heinemeier Hansson, the designer of Ruby on Rails where David makes the statement saying: 12 reasons MS doesn't cut it for web development. In addition, be sure to read the original piece, Robert's rebuttal, and finally David's comeback.

In a nutshell, here are the 12 points that David raises. In reading this, the words could have been coming out of my own head.

1. Startup costs. Linux is free. Ruby on Rails is free. MySQL is free.


2. Performance per dollar. They perceive that a Linux server running Apache has more performance than IIS running .NET.


3. Finding tech staff is easier. There are a whole new raft of young, highly skilled people willing to work long hours at startups who can build sites using Ruby on Rails.


4. Perception of scalability. The geeks who run these new businesses perceive that they can scale up their data centers with Linux and not with Windows (the old “Google runs on Linux” argument).


5. That Microsoft doesn’t care about small businesses. After all, Microsoft is an evil borg, but Ruby on Rails comes from a single guy: David Heinemeier Hansson. He has a blog and answers questions fast.


6. That open source makes it easier to fix problems and/or build custom solutions. A variant of the old “Google or Amazon couldn’t be built on Windows” argument.


7. On clients, they want to choose the highest-reach platforms. That doesn’t mean a Windows app. Or even an app that runs only in IE. It must run on every variant of Linux and Macintosh too.


8. They don’t want to take shit from their friends (or, even, their Venture Capitalist). Most of this is just pure cost-control. I can hear the conversation now: “OK, you wanna go with Windows as your platform, but is the extra feature worth the licensing fees for Windows?”


9. No lockin. These new businesses don’t want to be locked into a specific vendor’s problems, er products. Why? Because that way they can’t shop for the best price among tools (or move to something else if the architecture changes).


10. More security. The new businesses perceive Linux, Apache, Firefox, and other open source stuff to have higher security than stuff built on Windows.


11. More agility. I’ve had entrepreneurs tell me they need to be able to buy a server and have it totally up and running in less than 30 minutes and that they say that Linux is better at that.


12. The working set is smaller. Because Linux can be stripped down, the entrepreneurs are telling me that they can make their server-side stuff run faster and with less memory usage.

Robert, this is the kind of thing that so many people working in the (don't make me actually use the term) Web 2.0 world inherently take as a gospel truth. I give you major props for even printing this and I hope it opens some eyes (on both sides). Ultimately, this is not an us vs them world in my eyes -- but I find it absolutely fascinating how the giant is now the underdog and all of these great technologies that have been developed by the little guys are literally reshaping our world. If nothing else, it is certainly going to be a wild ride and fun not only to watch but to be involved with.

By the way, David, the gentleman at the center of all of this, is a 26 year old from Copenhagen. I can't tell you how exciting it is to watch everyday people take the web and make it into what they want it to be without waiting for the big guys to step up and fill in the gaps that I would argue they don't even fully understand.